The Portuguese municipality of Fundão hosted the first follow-up meeting of the Interreg Sudoe SenForFire project. After visiting the seven pilot areas since June, the researchers are now ready to test in laboratory and wind tunnel the first prototypes designed to facilitate the co-responsible management of these phenomena
. Arenas de San Pedro, Carucedo, Jerez de los Caballeros, Santibañez el Alto, Fundão, San Juan de Loira and La Massana are the municipalities in which the seven pilot areas are located, which already have an action plan to form part of the results to be obtained within three years through the SenForFire project of the Interreg Sudoe programme.
This was announced just a few days ago in the Portuguese municipality of Fundão, where more than thirty researchers and technicians travelled to hold the first meeting of the project to show the progress made nine months after the start of the project.
During the meeting, several sessions were held to learn about the specifications of the different spaces in the areas of the Sudoe region that make up SenForFire. Esther Hontañón, the main researcher of this project, has indicated that after tracing this picture, the time has come to carry out the first tests of the sensors with which the project seeks to design monitoring and early warning systems in areas of high fire risk and at a low cost.
These tests will be carried out at the Department of Forest Dynamics and Management of the National Institute for Agricultural and Food Research and Technology (INIA), which is part of the CSIC (Spanish National Research Council). Here, over the next few months, SenForFire members will verify and validate the prototypes designed so far. ‘They are sensors or prototypes created for this project and tested with atmospheric data, and will be what we will be working on now before moving on to the next phase of greater applicability and training for the population’.
In addition, the SUDOE-Forestal Civil Protection Centre was inaugurated during the conference and the communication tools that will help to transfer the knowledge generated to society and highlight the value of the work carried out through this initiative focused on research and innovation were presented.
SenForFire
The SenForFire project, which has started in January 2024 and will end in December 2026, will demonstrate the feasibility of low-cost wireless sensor networks (WSNs) for application in forest fire surveillance and early warning systems. At present, meteorological data and satellite images of the land surface (remote sensing) with low spatial and temporal resolution and unreliable (high false positive rate) are currently used in the Sudoe. In turn, the project will carry out Pilot Activities in areas of the Sudoe with different climate, orography and vegetation with prevention and/or early detection objectives. It will also develop an Action Plan for the adoption of WSNs by municipalities for meteorological and environmental monitoring purposes and an Action Plan for the training of professionals in WSNs for environmental risk management.
Consortium
The project involves R&D centers of CSIC (ITEFI, INIA-ICIFOR, IMB-CNM) and CNRS (CIRIMAT, LAAS) and universities (Extremadura, Évora, Coimbra and Toulouse), experts in the technologies that integrate WSNs; agencies knowledgeable and competent in prevention and detection of forest fires (AEMET and AR+I); companies that develop and offer products and services for environmental monitoring (Ray Ingeniería Electrónica and Arantec); national (MITECO), regional (Junta de Extremadura and Junta de Castilla y León), provincial (Diputación de Ávila) and local (Municipio do Fundão and Comunidade Intermunicipal do Alto Minho) public administrations with competences in forest policy and legislation, in its application and implementation in the Sudoe territory.
Contact
Those interested in validating prototypes or commercial products based on low-cost sensors for the prevention and/or detection of forest fires in real scenarios such as those offered by the SenForFire project can contact:
Esther Hontañón
Institute of Physical and Information Technologies ITEFI
Spanish National Research Council CSIC
SenForFire Coordinator